Archives - The Accrington Pals

by Peter Whelan

Directed by Hugh Croydon

Friday 20th – Saturday 28th November 1998 in the Auditorium

At 7.30am in the bright sunshine of July 1^st 1916, 700 men of the 11^th Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment advanced from their trenches before the fortified village of Serre near the river Somme. These men were the “Accrington Pals”.

In less than twenty minutes, 235 of them lay dead and 350 wounded, 585 out of 700. Not a man of them wavered or turned back.

And what of the mothers, wives and sisters left behind in Accrington?

This moving, absorbing and at times funny play tells the story of these women and the men who marched so high-spiritedly off to war.